Vocational education needs reform

HCM City (VNA) – Vietnam’s vocational education system must undergo reform to produce workers who can compete with their counterparts in other countries, the head of Institute of Vocational Education Studies has said.

Speaking at a conference held in HCM City on September 11, Dr Vu Xuan Hung said that only 38.5 percent of labourers had been trained at vocational schools.

“Vietnam’s labourers are not ready for the ASEAN Economic Community,” Hung said.

The number of unemployed students has increased quarter by quarter, he said, adding that workers’ English skills were lower than those in Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia.

He said that vocational training would be necessary to close the gap with workers in other countries.

Dr Huynh Thanh Dien, who is working on a support industry project, said many workers were not qualified to work in standard manufacturing.

This was partly due to lack of cooperation in training between enterprises and schools. The city, for instance, had not created models for cooperation and vocational school training had not been based on enterprises’ need, he said.

Associations that represent businesses should establish links between schools and companies, he said.

HCM City will need 270,000 employees each year from now to 2025, and of that amount, 85 percent should be trained labour, according to the Centre for Human Resource Forecast and Labour Information.

Since 2011, the southeastern region has lacked sufficient human resources for the construction and industrial sector, while there are more than enough workers for the service sector.

Each year, the number of working-age people from 15 years old and above in the city increases by 100,000.

Of this number, 70 percent continue to study at high school or university and the remaining seek jobs or attend vocational training schools.-VNA